“Editor’s note: Over 100 members of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China, were arrested beginning Sunday, December 9. At the time of publication of this translation, arrests are still being made. Among those taken away were Pastor Wang Yi, senior pastor of Early Rain, and his wife, Jiang Rong, who have not been heard from since Sunday.

On the basis of the teachings of the Bible and the mission of the gospel, I respect the authorities God has established in China. For God deposes kings and raises up kings. This is why I submit to the historical and institutional arrangements of God in China.

As a pastor of a Christian church, I have my own understanding and views, based on the Bible, about what righteous order and good government is. At the same time, I am filled with anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime, at the wickedness of their depriving people of the freedoms of religion and of conscience. But changing social and political institutions is not the mission I have been called to, and it is not the goal for which God has given his people the gospel.

For all hideous realities, unrighteous politics, and arbitrary laws manifest the cross of Jesus Christ, the only means by which every Chinese person must be saved. They also manifest the fact that true hope and a perfect society will never be found in the transformation of any earthly institution or culture but only in our sins being freely forgiven by Christ and in the hope of eternal life.

As a pastor, my firm belief in the gospel, my teaching, and my rebuking of all evil proceeds from Christ’s command in the gospel and from the unfathomable love of that glorious King. Every man’s life is extremely short, and God fervently commands the church to lead and call any man to repentance who is willing to repent. Christ is eager and willing to forgive all who turn from their sins. This is the goal of all the efforts of the church in China—to testify to the world about our Christ, to testify to the Middle Kingdom about the Kingdom of Heaven, to testify to earthly, momentary lives about heavenly, eternal life. This is also the pastoral calling that I have received.

For this reason, I accept and respect the fact that this Communist regime has been allowed by God to rule temporarily. As the Lord’s servant John Calvin said, wicked rulers are the judgment of God on a wicked people, the goal being to urge God’s people to repent and turn again toward Him. For this reason, I am joyfully willing to submit myself to their enforcement of the law as though submitting to the discipline and training of the Lord.

At the same time, I believe that this Communist regime’s persecution against the church is a greatly wicked, unlawful action. As a pastor of a Christian church, I must denounce this wickedness openly and severely. The calling that I have received requires me to use non-violent methods to disobey those human laws that disobey the Bible and God. My Savior Christ also requires me to joyfully bear all costs for disobeying wicked laws.

But this does not mean that my personal disobedience and the disobedience of the church is in any sense “fighting for rights” or political activism in the form of civil disobedience, because I do not have the intention of changing any institutions or laws of China. As a pastor, the only thing I care about is the disruption of man’s sinful nature by this faithful disobedience and the testimony it bears for the cross of Christ.

As a pastor, my disobedience is one part of the gospel commission. Christ’s great commission requires of us great disobedience. The goal of disobedience is not to change the world but to testify about another world.

For the mission of the church is only to be the church and not to become a part of any secular institution. From a negative perspective, the church must separate itself from the world and keep itself from being institutionalized by the world. From a positive perspective, all acts of the church are attempts to prove to the world the real existence of another world. The Bible teaches us that, in all matters relating to the gospel and human conscience, we must obey God and not men. For this reason, spiritual disobedience and bodily suffering are both ways we testify to another eternal world and to another glorious King.

This is why I am not interested in changing any political or legal institutions in China. I’m not even interested in the question of when the Communist regime’s policies persecuting the church will change. Regardless of which regime I live under now or in the future, as long as the secular government continues to persecute the church, violating human consciences that belong to God alone, I will continue my faithful disobedience. For the entire commission God has given me is to let more Chinese people know through my actions that the hope of humanity and society is only in the redemption of Christ, in the supernatural, gracious sovereignty of God.

If God decides to use the persecution of this Communist regime against the church to help more Chinese people to despair of their futures, to lead them through a wilderness of spiritual disillusionment and through this to make them know Jesus, if through this he continues disciplining and building up his church, then I am joyfully willing to submit to God’s plans, for his plans are always benevolent and good.

Precisely because none of my words and actions are directed toward seeking and hoping for societal and political transformation, I have no fear of any social or political power. For the Bible teaches us that God establishes governmental authorities in order to terrorize evildoers, not to terrorize doers of good. If believers in Jesus do no wrong then they should not be afraid of dark powers. Even though I am often weak, I firmly believe this is the promise of the gospel. It is what I’ve devoted all of my energy to. It is the good news that I am spreading throughout Chinese society.

I also understand that this happens to be the very reason why the Communist regime is filled with fear at a church that is no longer afraid of it.

If I am imprisoned for a long or short period of time, if I can help reduce the authorities’ fear of my faith and of my Savior, I am very joyfully willing to help them in this way. But I know that only when I renounce all the wickedness of this persecution against the church and use peaceful means to disobey, will I truly be able to help the souls of the authorities and law enforcement. I hope God uses me, by means of first losing my personal freedom, to tell those who have deprived me of my personal freedom that there is an authority higher than their authority, and that there is a freedom that they cannot restrain, a freedom that fills the church of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

Regardless of what crime the government charges me with, whatever filth they fling at me, as long as this charge is related to my faith, my writings, my comments, and my teachings, it is merely a lie and temptation of demons. I categorically deny it. I will serve my sentence, but I will not serve the law. I will be executed, but I will not plead guilty.

Moreover, I must point out that persecution against the Lord’s church and against all Chinese people who believe in Jesus Christ is the most wicked and the most horrendous evil of Chinese society. This is not only a sin against Christians. It is also a sin against all non-Christians. For the government is brutally and ruthlessly threatening them and hindering them from coming to Jesus. There is no greater wickedness in the world than this.

If this regime is one day overthrown by God, it will be for no other reason than God’s righteous punishment and revenge for this evil. For on earth, there has only ever been a thousand-year church. There has never been a thousand-year government. There is only eternal faith. There is no eternal power.

Those who lock me up will one day be locked up by angels. Those who interrogate me will finally be questioned and judged by Christ. When I think of this, the Lord fills me with a natural compassion and grief toward those who are attempting to and actively imprisoning me. Pray that the Lord would use me, that he would grant me patience and wisdom, that I might take the gospel to them.

Separate me from my wife and children, ruin my reputation, destroy my life and my family – the authorities are capable of doing all of these things. However, no one in this world can force me to renounce my faith; no one can make me change my life; and no one can raise me from the dead.

And so, respectable officers, stop committing evil. This is not for my benefit but rather for yours and your children’s. I plead earnestly with you to stay your hands, for why should you be willing to pay the price of eternal damnation in hell for the sake of a lowly sinner such as I?

Jesus is the Christ, son of the eternal, living God. He died for sinners and rose to life for us. He is my king and the king of the whole earth yesterday, today, and forever. I am his servant, and I am imprisoned because of this. I will resist in meekness those who resist God, and I will joyfully violate all laws that violate God’s laws.

First draft on September 21st, 2018; revised on October 4th. To be published by the church after 48 hours of detention.

Appendix: What Constitutes Faithful Disobedience

I firmly believe that the Bible has not given any branch of any government the authority to run the church or to interfere with the faith of Christians. Therefore, the Bible demands that I, through peaceable means, in meek resistance and active forbearance, filled with joy, resist all administrative policies and legal measures that oppress the church and interfere with the faith of Christians.

I firmly believe this is a spiritual act of disobedience. In modern authoritarian regimes that persecute the church and oppose the gospel, spiritual disobedience is an inevitable part of the gospel movement.

I firmly believe that spiritual disobedience is an act of the last times; it is a witness to God’s eternal kingdom in the temporal kingdom of sin and evil. Disobedient Christians follow the example of the crucified Christ by walking the path of the cross. Peaceful disobedience is the way in which we love the world as well as the way in which we avoid becoming part of the world.

I firmly believe that in carrying out spiritual disobedience, the Bible demands me to rely on the grace and resurrection power of Christ, that I must respect and not overstep two boundaries.

The first boundary is that of the heart. Love toward the soul, and not hatred toward the body, is the motivation of spiritual disobedience. Transformation of the soul, and not the changing of circumstances, is the aim of spiritual disobedience. At any time, if external oppression and violence rob me of inner peace and endurance, so that my heart begins to breed hatred and bitterness toward those who persecute the church and abuse Christians, then spiritual disobedience fails at that point.

The second boundary is that of behavior. The gospel demands that disobedience of faith must be non-violent. The mystery of the gospel lies in actively suffering, even being willing to endure unrighteous punishment, as a substitute for physical resistance. Peaceful disobedience is the result of love and forgiveness. The cross means being willing to suffer when one does not have to suffer. For Christ had limitless ability to fight back, yet he endured all of the humility and hurt. The way that Christ resisted the world that resisted him was by extending an olive branch of peace on the cross to the world that crucified him.

I firmly believe that Christ has called me to carry out this faithful disobedience through a life of service, under this regime that opposes the gospel and persecutes the church. This is the means by which I preach the gospel, and it is the mystery of the gospel which I preach.

The Lord’s servant,Wang Yi

First draft on September 21st, 2018; revised on October 4th. To be circulated by the church after 48 hours of detention.”

If you lived in Hendersonville in the 1970-80s, in all likelihood, you have a Johnny Cash story. That story weaves you into a reality to which very few others can relate. This was a town where an Oak Ridge Boy was your neighbor. The best Halloween candy you could get was from a wrestling promoter’s house. The entire world showed up to your town for Roy Orbison’s funeral. To see Johnny or June running errands was not unexpected because they lived in your city and there were no pretensions about them. Here are a few stories that circulated in my little adolescent world:

1. I saw Johnny at Eckerd buying something for a cold he was nursing. The Man in Black got the sniffles.

2. My friend, Will, sold him mulch at Wal-mart.

3. My mother saw him pull up to the Coke machine outside of K-Mart, put in 2 quarters, get nothing in return and then started beating on it like it took his last dime.

4. My mother-in-law and June seemed to have similar shopping schedules at the Kroger.

All of these stories mean nothing. June needed some chicken. She went to the store. She did not pull an old lady out of a burning building. She was just buying groceries like everyone else. But these stories do mean something. I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they…all saw Johnny or June somewhere. Somewhere that we all went on a regular basis. And that is strange. If I see a person in real life that I have seen on television, it takes me a few seconds to adjust to their three-dimensionality. Add on top of that discombobulation that you are sneaking sausage samples from a tray that was left out at the deli of a grocery store and it all doubles down on the weird.

Brady Haston- Burden, oil on linen mounted to panel, 15x18", 2016

Everyone knew where Johnny and June lived. It was not hard to find their house. You drove past it on your driver’s exam. The house appeared approachable enough to my friend, Esther, that as a 16 year old, she walked down his driveway, expecting to get to the door, talk to him and find out how to meet Larry Mullen, Jr. “Why c’mon in little lady. Can I get you some tea? How can I help you?” Instead, she was met on the driveway by a very large but nice guard that heard her plight and said, “Well, you’re not going to meet Mr. Cash today, but here is Cowboy Jack (Clement)’s address. Maybe he can help.” Esther did eventually meet Larry but not because of Cowboy Jack, however he did invite Esther and her friend inside to watch home movies of U2 hanging out at his house over a Christmas holiday.

A person’s Johnny story (or your Johnny’s big security guard story) is tied to a place. Tied to a very ordinary place- a store, his house, the DMV, etc. It’s not like we lived in Rome and saw him at the Pantheon. That would not be as unexpected. Who would not want to see the Pantheon? Even Johnny is going to be impressed with the Pantheon. Seeing an American icon buying Robitussin while you are buying a pack of Hubba Bubba is something different.

Brady Haston- Plateau, oil on linen mounted to panel, 14x18", 2015

All of this is 25-35 years in the past. Hendersonville has about 20,000 more residents than when I lived there. Johnny is gone. June is gone. Their house burned to the ground while renovations were being made by the next owner. The Wal-mart where Johnny bought mulch moved to a new location. The K-mart where he beat up a Coke machine is now Kroger. The old Kroger is currently nothing.

These ordinary places, ubiquitous and reproduced in every other midsize town, are still around but gone at the same time. That K-Mart was my record store growing up. We did not “go to Nashville” when I was young. My mom acted like you needed a wagon train and three months provisions to get to Nashville. We went to Rivergate Mall. So my music stores were K-Mart, a Cat’s Record and whatever was at Rivergate…Camelot, I think. Camelot. Mercy. This was not just a K-mart to be tossed aside for me. It is understandable to mourn the loss of a mom-and-pop business but I am not going to argue with you if you have to make your peace with the closing of the chain store where you bought Kiss’s Destroyer album or a $20 Pole Position game for your Atari that you and your brother had to save 3 months of allowance to afford.

The Kroger had a video store in it. There was a pizza kiosk where someone had to make and shrink wrap the “ready to bake” Kroger pizzas on site. The store was in a strip connected to a Subway and a Baskin Robbins. My wife and I got engaged in the parking lot before going to see the Big Lebowski. Not romantic but that is how we do things. We could have gone on a hike or to a nice restaurant, but we are ice cream and Coen Brothers people. The roads of much more romantic proposals have ended at law offices.

I drove out to Hendersonville this week to see that parking lot. The old store sat there, newly emptied, with a decent traffic still present for Subway and Baskin Robbins. I had a selfish “how dare you?” moment. I got engaged there. Where’s my plaque? June Carter Cash bought peanut butter here. Where is the plaque? If I walk across the street to the Methodist parking lot, where is the historical marker that says, “Here in 1992, Rob Matthews sat in the back of David Heeks’ pickup truck and listened to the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head for the first time. It has never sounded better, even in headphones, than sitting in the back of that truck.”

One day that Methodist church will not be there. One day, Maple Road will not intersect with Indian Lake Road. It does now and will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. Thousands of people drive past it everyday. But for me, as a 10 year old, in 1984, it is at that intersection, sitting in the passenger seat of our family car that I felt SOMETHING. Something massive. Something bigger than Michael Jackson or UNC basketball or Atari or anything else that ruled my world in 1984. I felt the Holy Spirit move upon me. My first mountaintop experience was in a station wagon at a random intersection in a town whose biggest claim to fame was that there was a brick wall with “Hello Darlin” laid into the patterning of the brick. I cried, not from pain but from joy and I cried hard. I do not even remember if I was able to explain to my mother why I was crying. I assume that I did because she did not take me to the hospital.

Prone to nostalgia, these are the things that welled up in me when reflecting on Brady Haston’s show at Zeitgeist. Keep in mind, the show has nothing to do with the Big Lebowski, the Beastie Boys or the Holy Spirit. It is abstraction derived from the history of an area though, specifically 18th-century frontier Nashville. There is a language developed by mining the past and elaborating on that. The truth becomes legend when it is abstracted. Haston’s palette gives both the residue of something past with moments of contemporary clarity laid on top. That is how I walk through half of my life. This is not an abandoned building. It is where I got engaged. This is not a mall parking lot. It is where I rode the Flume Zoom. This is not a baseball park. It is an empty void behind a soccer field where I would watch trains pass at night. This is not a road. It is where the promise of an eternal covenant exploded in front of me.